Tag Archive: future

Of all religious books, only the Bible has hundreds of prophecies that have been fulfilled. Fortune tellers often give vague predictions, but many Biblical prophecies are starkly specific. Only an all-knowing God knows the future so precisely, even centuries after the forecast. Below are just a few examples:

“I will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves. They will destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers; and I will scrape her debris from her and make her a bare rock. She will be a place for the spreading of nets.”

Notice four points: (1) many nations will come; (2) invasions will be like sea waves; (3) Tyre will be “a bare rock”; and (4) Tyre will be for “spreading of nets.”

Each of these precise prophesies has come true. Throughout history, many nations have come against Tyre, like many destructive waves. This vibrant center of ancient commerce was scrapped off its island and became just “a bare rock” on which modern fishermen spread their nets. How could someone guess all this without divine help?

The Nation of Israel Conquered, Scattered, and Brought Back. When a people is conquered, they often assimilate into the host nation and lose their identity as a people. Yet the Jewish people have not only been conquered numerous times, but have also been spread to every land across earth, after Jerusalem’s destruction in A.D. 70. That the Jews didn’t assimilate is in itself a miracle. Yet another miracle occurred: after 2,000 years of worldwide scattering, the nation of Israel was reborn in 1948. No other ancient nation in history has done the same. Mighty empires like the Hittites have vanished, yet the lowly, persecuted Jew survived and returned to his land.

The answer to this enigma lies in God’s prophecies in the Bible. If Israel committed evil, God warned that they would be scattered among the nations (Deuteronomy 28:15, 64). Yet God promised them that when “you return to the Lord your God . . . then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples” (Deuteronomy 30:2-3). Even the exact date of Israel’s rebirth – 1948 – was predicted in Ezekiel 4:3-6, as explained in fascinating detail in The Signature of God by Grant Jeffrey.

Prophecies of Messiah

Since the world fell into evil, God promised that a Savior, or Messiah, would come to set things right (Genesis 3:15). Hundreds of prophecies, recorded in the Old Testament, were fulfilled in Jesus Christ, this Messiah. He was prophesied to . . .

(5) come before the Jews’ governmental authority is taken away (Genesis 49:10; fulfilled: Jesus was born before 11 A.D., when Rome removed Israel’s right to judge).

Payment for His People’s Wrongdoings. Written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus Christ, Isaiah 53 prophesied that the Messiah’s suffering and death would save His people from the debt of their wrong actions. Below is just part of Isaiah 53:

“But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth. . . . His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth” (Isaiah 53:5-7,9)

The New Testament reveals that even the details of Isaiah 53 came true in Jesus: He bore our sin in His body on the cross (1 Peter 2:24), uttered no protest when falsely accused (Matthew 27:12-14), died with criminals (Luke 23:33), and was buried in a rich man’s tomb (Mark 15:43-46). Isaiah 53 is so prophetic of Jesus’ life that some Jews have speculated that Isaiah 53 was a Christian forgery. But this possibility was forever disproven when a copy of Isaiah was discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls. This copy dates 100 B.C. – 100 years Before Christ. Clearly, Isaiah 53 prophesies Jesus.

Exact Date of Jesus’ Unveiling as Messiah and Time of His Death. “Messianic Prophecies” (Christiananswers.net) explains a yet even more stunning prophecy: “The precise timing of Jesus’ crucifixion was also given to the Jews when God revealed to the prophet Daniel (9:24) how the Jews could calculate the day of the revealing of the Messiah. Talking of a 490 year period, the prophet foresaw that it would begin “from the going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem” (9:25). In the book of Nehemiah we learn that this command was given “in the month Nisan [on the Hebrew calendar], in the twentieth year of the king” (2:1). The king was Artaxerxes Longimanus who ruled from 465 to 425 B.C. The prophet Daniel said that 483 years from that date, the Messiah would be revealed to Israel, but He would then “be cut off, but not for himself” (9:26). This prophecy refers to the crucifixion when Jesus died, or was cut off, for the sins of the world.

“483 years later, to the day, was Sunday, April 6, 32 A.D. On that day, which we commemorate as Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and revealed Himself as Israel’s Messiah. He was killed four days later, thus fulfilling the prophecy that He would be revealed and then slain. [Peter and Paul LaLonde, 301 Startling Proofs & Prophecies (Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada: Prophecy Partners, Inc., 1996).]”

Prophecies of the Last Days

The Bible’s prophecies of the world’s end are being fulfilled at an accelerating pace: (1) nation rising against nation (Matthew 24:3-8), fulfilled in world wars; (2) rise of transportation speed and technology in the last days (Daniel 12:4); (3) gospel preached in whole world before the end (Matt. 24:14), an unbelievable feat nearing fulfillment in today’s global information age and worldwide missionary movement; (4) one world government (Revelation 13:7), possible today for the first time in history; and (5) false christs that deceive many (Matt. 24:5, 24), fulfilled in the increase of cult leaders.

Don’t bet your life that these prophecies were fulfilled by mere chance. God gave these prophecies as compelling evidence because He wants you to trust that His Words are true and that He is in control of the future for the good of those He loves. Let Him handle your future. For more information: askwitnessingGod@gmail.com

The future is a fickle thing. To rational beings such as ourselves, we are irked when we cannot set our destinies out perfectly before us, when we cannot see the road of our lives turn and lengthen before us, the picture of predictability. More troubling is simply not knowing – not having a certain and infallible picture of what lies before us. In reaction, worry consumes us; we are tortured by the possibles, by the what if’s, the maybe’s and perhaps’s. How can we know what will happen to us? How can we be sure? How can we predict what is to come?

Simply, we can’t.

But we must understand that this is not the final answer to the question of life’s if’s, for life is not a progression of chances, a plodding series of meaningless circumstances. Life is too complex for that. The minuteness of science and the vastness of philosophy prove that there is Something greater than ourselves from Whom all knowledge flows. The truth of answered prayer and the sting of genuine conscience attest to the existence of a very real Someone behind the hopes of man. And this God is not a silent watcher or purposeless bystander to the events of life. He is active and participant in our lives and in the very existence of this universe, for the delicate bond of physical life could not be sustained without divine hands. This God is great and awesome, for Who could create conscious life from empty blackness? This God is caring and just, for Who can employ all the beautiful virtues in a single act of history, in His Son’s death and resurrection?

But this God is also full of all knowledge and wisdom. From before the beginning, He knew and planned what was to be (Prov. 16:9; Acts 4:27-28; Eph. 1:4-5; etc). From the infinite wells of his understanding, he molded the figure of history, from its greatest battles to its smallest deaths, for not even a sparrow is lost from His eye when it falls. This God of Heaven is the only One Who knows what is to come, for He is the only One Who fashioned the future. It is He on Whom we must place our trust and hope. He is the One we must look to when the storms of life water our view of the future, and He is the One we must trust even when it seems that the cycles of life are moving effortlessly.

And trust in God is not an empty thing. By holding dear what is true, we acknowledge a pleasing grace to His children: For God only does to His people that which is good for them (Rom. 8:28). This, however, does not merely mean what seems good in our eyes; it does not eradicate sadness and evil in the lives of His people, no. The promise means that, in whatever befalls us, God has set up an end that is for the benefit of our souls, for the improvement of our spirits towards Him. And often it is the sadder things of life that brings us nearer to Him than the glowing moments of ease. In the still and grave experiences, we mine deeper into our hearts, farther in our minds, to find eternal peace and meaning. So we cannot be surprised that God plans misfortunes for us; for it is, in the end, for our benefit, and for His glory. For even “the wrath of man shall praise thee” (Ps. 76:10), so how can we doubt His purpose in everything that occurs?

Therefore, we must be soothed, we must be calmed, by the fact of God’s great all-knowing nature, that He is always sure of what is ahead, that He is always the same in His graceful purpose for everything He does. The worries of life should never touch the leveled waters of our souls, for we have more than a promise, more than a hope; we have a God Who is real and active and in complete sovereign control over the littlest things in all of life.

God is a God of many facets and beauties. One of His pleasures is the gift of His purpose in the lives of His children. We, then, must trust Him; we must give our minds wholly to His will and His plan. For though we cannot ever know the future, we can live in peace, knowing this: that God sees only the future He put in motion, that there are no wondering possibilities, that there are, in the eyes of God, no if’s in life at all.

In a few simple words, the Scriptures reveal that every star and galaxy, every atom and whiff of dust, every stretch of space was there, and before that, was not. There was a time when there was not even time. There was only God.

That in the beginning, God created the world out of nothing leads to this inescapable conclusion: God must know the end. And every event in between.

Now this consequence may not be apparent at first. Quite a few people claim that God cannot know the future, saying that man has a free will that can choose any option it desires. How can God predict exactly what man will do? In fact, some people say that the failings of mankind illustrate how God’s plan to bring man into fellowship with Himself did not work, and thus He could not have seen the future implications of what man would do. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, the Creator supposedly was sorrowfully surprised and had to devise a new plan in order to fix the soiled world. He chose Israel among the nations and gave them strict rules of righteousness, bristling with the utter holiness of God. Israel woefully failed again and again. So God supposedly “learned” from these experiences and changed course in the New Testament. And now God is waiting for and hoping that men will respond to His new message. Certainly, they say, God could not have known the future, for why else did He make all these “mistakes” in His plan?

This idea is totally un-Biblical and even irrational. For when a smart scientist invents a machine, he knows exactly how it works and its strong and weak points. He must know because he was the one to fit together its beams and nail in the bolts. So also God must know every cranny and instinct of his creation. However, one may object that an invention sometimes acts contrary to the predictions and expectations of its inventor. But such mishaps can happen because the inventor did not know enough about the natural properties and laws governing the materials and energies of his invention. He cannot always predict what his machine will do because it is made of parts which he himself did not make. If the scientist created every part from nothing, then he would know all there is to know about his invention. Nothing about it can surprise him.

But God is not like the inventor; every aspect of the machinations of the universe were set up by Him alone, from nothing. How can anything go against His will when He knows everything’s exact dimensions and abilities? If there are no “foreign” elements in God’s creation, how can anything transgress the function it was given to perform by God? Since all the parts were created by only one Inventor, then He must know precisely what His invention will do. It is logically impossible otherwise.

“For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” Romans 11:36.

Thus, everything is happening according to God’s grand plan, and God knows exactly what will transpire in the future because He planned the future. He created everything in just the right way so that the laws of nature and the instincts of man will lead history to one inescapable, glorious conclusion. When He formed Adam and Eve from the dust of the earth, He knew that eventually, the desires of their hearts would lead them to sin. God could have created their wills differently, totally unable to think or do wickedness. In fact, He could have just left out the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from Eden, and none of the messes of man would have even started. He could have created Satan to have a will that desired only Him, and then no heavenly rebellion would have been possible.

But God did not create this world so that He could be a great Genie or because He was bored or needed anything. In the overflow of His triune, everlasting, unfathomable inner joy, He created man and the angels. He planned that evil and suffering would enter His perfect world because He has planned a divine Story. He designed from before the beginning that He would come to earth and take up human form, to be the perfect Redeemer of sinners that have yet to exist. He has created the universe the way it is so He can show His incomprehensible glory. He has created the angels as watchers and participants in a Play situated upon a little planet circling a star among billions, in a galaxy among trillions.

“For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men” I Corinthians 4:9.

For though the angels can see His majesty without impediment, they have never experienced His mercy, His loving, unfathomable grace.

“Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into” I Peter 1:12.

The angels are watching as the pages unfold upon earth, as God’s wisdom and power clash with evil, as God’s righteous wrath is revealed against sin, and God’s love and mercy are showered upon undeserving sinners. They are watching as the Author weaves His theme in the lives of men, the characters in the Story. Some characters have been chosen to be the good guys, others as the bad guys; some characters play a little role; others appear again and again. But the purpose of everything is one: to glorify God, the only One worthy of glory.

“Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory” Romans 9:21-23.

We sometimes wonder why life does not seem to make sense. But we are only a little part of the plan; God sees the whole plot. We only see the present conflict, seemingly impossible to solve. But God has already written the end. He has already worked out all the twists in between. We can rest in assurance and peace, for Good will triumph in His Story.